Australia cont'd

I've had some issues with Internet connectivity lately so here goes the very delayed last entry to my traveling blog. Since I left Australia I was back in London for two weeks, doing some work for a quick bank account boost, and I'm currently in the States visiting friends and family for a few weeks.

Here it goes:

So after leaving Sydney I headed up to Byron Bay with the Wills. We got off the bus after what ended up being a pretty sleepless night for me and arrived to several backpacker staff with their vans trying to draw us to their hostels. It worked; Will, Will and I were too tired to do any deciding ourselves, so we followed a blond Canadian named Eric to his van and he took us to Aquarius hostel. 

We checked in to the nicest dorm I've ever stayed in and picked beds on the top floor of our duplex style room where we met Katie, another Canadian who had also just arrived. 

Our first day in Byron was spent watching the rain POUR down like I've never seen before. We realized that this may go on, so we found out about bus trips to a place called Nimbin - a hippie town that hasn't moved on since about 1968. We took a very psychedelic bus tour to the town listening to Pink Floyd, The Doors and other 'free love' bands to arrive in a multi-coloured tie-dye town. Walking down the main street was an exercise in turning down one offer after another for weed, brownies, more weed, cookies...you get the idea. I took a tour of the Nimbin Museum whose design concept was something along the lines of 'here's some stuff I found on the street/at the flea market/in my cellar.' There was stuff EVERYWHERE, and none of it seemed to make any sort of sense. Hippie heaven. At the end, before exiting, we met a 50-something year old woman rushing off yelling "just wait 15 minutes guys, I'll be back with the cookies soon, I just have to pick them up from my house." This wasn't just a nice lady who baked things for visitors. She made her money making tourists feel like they were on a Grateful Dead tour, or a character in Ken Kesey's acid charged life. On the way home our bus driver pointed out all the 'beautiful shades of green' in the countryside and took us through the mud back to our Byron home. Where it was still raining. 

Unfortunately the rain continued so after meeting the backpacker staff and we spent our nights exploring Byron Bay nightlife with them and spending most of our days watching the rain come down with two days of sun that we spent on the beach and walking to the lighthouse - the Easternmost point of mainland Australia. 

After a few days I decided I needed to make a move up north if I wanted to see more of the country. One problem. All that rain? Causes problems. Like flooding. In both directions. 

Nobody, myself included, could get in or (more importantly) OUT of Byron for a few days. 

I embraced my fate and paid at the reception for more nights at Aquarius. At least I could hang out here with people I liked, and I got free dinner every night, even if it was the same stuff over and over again... free is free. Plus we entertained ourselves with pub quiz nights and poker tournaments.

For all the less-than-ideal weather, I had an amazing time in Byron Bay thanks to the Wills, Katie and the Aquarius staff. After deciding that it was time for me to leave I realized that my time was now quite short, so instead of heading up north I headed back to Sydney and the twins. Since the highway was still flooded I took a flight from the small airport inland that was still accessible down to Sydney airport where Joh met me to take me back to another few days of home comforts. Mike and Lisa were still around so I spent my last few days seeing them, taking a day trip to the Blue Mountains, and going to the Sydney Aquarium where I saw a platypus! They'd been hiding when we went to the Sydney Zoo in my first week, so I was glad to check off that last Australian animal from my list after kangaroo, wallaby and koala among others. 

I also cooked a meal for Nad, Sal, Joh and Lisa that went down well, I think? 

I loved Australia, a sentiment perhaps not expressed well enough in this shortened version of my time there, but I have decided to save up as quickly as possible for a return trip on a one year work-holiday visa. 

So that's it! I took a flight from Sydney back to Bangkok where I spent a day doing some last minute shopping and sharing my stories with new travelers experiencing their first nights abroad on Koh San Road. Then it was back to the airport to travel back to London and home. 

Seven and a half months later, a term of teaching and an amazing backpacker experience through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and finally Australia and I'm back where I started. Back in the Foster home in Crouch End, London. Dreaming of my next adventure. 

I've had a great time writing this blog and plan on setting up a more permanent URL to continue life as a blogger, so watch this space for a final update and a name URL address. 

Thanks for reading, commenting, and sending me all those great letters and packages. I write for you. :)

"The world is a book and those who do not travel only read one page." - St Augustine. 

It was always you Thailand..

So after my tour of Laos and Cambodia I headed back into the familiar Land of Smiles. It was nice to be in a country where I didn't have to learn the language or customs as they were already old familiars to me.

The group split up a little due to various forms of travel. Matt and I took a very long bus from Sihanoukville to Bangkok. Actually I think it ended up being three buses? Four? Five? I lost count. But eventually we got to Khao San Road where we met up with Claudia and Calvin who had flown in from Phnom Penh.
There we also found Emily, Claudia's friend from home who came to join us for a few weeks and we had one night in the big city before we said a tearful goodbye to the boys and the girls headed to Koh Pha Ngan for a week to join the infamous Full Moon Party. This is the same party I went to for my New Years Eve, so my time on Koh Pha Ngan was "same same, but different" (don't ask, it's a Thai phrase, I don't know why they say it, but there you have it).

Our group became pretty huge after we met up with my friends from London, George, Sophie and Claudia, on top of meeting up with a couple - Graeme and Donna who we had briefly seen in Luang Prabang, and the five people they had also befriended on the island. On top of this Juliet had two friends from home meeting her, one of them brought a boyfriend and another friend in tow, AND Juliet's friend from Chang Rai plus a friend joined us too so it was quite the crowd.

We spent a week in Koh Pha Ngan and it was pretty interesting watching the island go from relatively quiet to completely overrun by the time the full moon hit. Unlike New Years, this time we all managed to stay on the beach until the sun had risen which was quite a sight to see, although not all of us remember it...

I enjoyed beign on the island for longer and getting to know some people. I befriended a group of Thai guys who work at an art gallery there and who welcomed me into their studio to hang out, listen to guitar and have a few drinks each night when I was walking home from whatever bar we had been in. Koh Pha Ngan is a strange island and I'm not sure I could stay there for too long, but I'm happy I got to know it a bit better this time.

The next day was reserved for being as lazy as possible before Emily, Claudia and I said goodbye and made our way up to Chang Mai for Songkran from April 13th - 15th. Songkran is the Thai New Year celebration; it's also celebrated in Cambodia and Laos I believe. It was essentially a three day long water fight on the streets. We reunited with Calvin who had been doing some volunteering work in the hilltribes outside of Chang Rai, and every day we went down to the streets armed with our super soakers ready for action. We parked ourselves near a backpacker corner of the city where the bars blasted music and people slowly drove down the streets in pick up trucks with enormous barrels of ICE water on the backs to soak unsuspecting pedestrians. The most fun was probably watching the Thai ladyboys strutting down the streets in their heels, hands in the air, getting drenched and loving it.

After three days of this we were exhausted. Emily, Claudia and I went to Pai, a village I visited in December (click here for the post) . My one day there was spent on rented motorbikes exploring around the various natural hotsprings and waterfalls. The village was significantly quieter than it had been in December, most likely because it was not a holiday weekend and it is summer now and Pai is a big tourist spot for Southern Thais to come in the winter so that they can feel the cold...I know, it's strange, we don't get it, but feeling cold is a novelty here. But it still had the feeling of a sleepy hippie town. After that I unfortunately had to leave to go to Myanmar...

The fun thing about visas is that they expire... A very long bus ride and a quick walk across the boarder and back again and I had a brand new visa, plus a new fun stamp on my passport, so everyone wins, especially the Burmese who are 500 Baht richer for every person like me. Rip off if you ask me....

After meeting the girls back in Chang Mai we headed down south for some more beachy goodness!

I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore...

Here's some photos relevent to my previous posts.

Lisa and I eating street food and beer at about 4 in the morning in Bangkok

My favourite part of the Grand Palace - the demons and the monkeys. (The monkeys are barefoot). Everything you see that looks like it might be made of gold or gold leaf - it is.

A group of us out at the Happy Beer Garden in Bangkok before experiencing ping pong...

It’s been a crazy few days since I last wrote.
As expected, elephant trekking and bamboo rafting was a fantastic experience. I highly recommend Kanchanaburi if you are ever in Thailand, it’s beautiful, and there’s a lot that I didn’t see, so I’m hoping to find time to return.

On our way to the hotel (which was a paradise in itself) we stopped by the Bridge over the River

Kwai, which apparently is really famous thanks to a movie that was made with the same title.
If you’ve heard of it, sorry to let you down in the movie culture side of things. I guess I haven’t seen as many films as I thought!
But the bridge has some interesting history that you should look up, to do with how it was built during WWII by POWs for Japan, thousands of which died during the construction/reconstruction (after the Allies bombed it). We almost got run over by a train, because we were not warned that the train tracks running along the bridge are still active! Luckily there’s little platforms along the bridge for pedestrians to cram onto to prevent death. How thoughtful.

Our hotel, as I said was a paradise running along the river Kwai, where I enjoyed a fantastic Thai massage. It’s hard to describe the hotel without this getting too long and boring, but just think peaceful jungle paradise. The picture is of the river by our hotel. The lamps are where we ate dinner.

Lisa and I shared an elephant ride, which was great. I got to ride on the elephant’s neck! And they went walking into the river and through the jungle. Then during our bamboo raft ride down the river, I actually spent most of the time swimming; so I get to say I’ve gone swimming in the River Kwai which at least my parents are exceptionally jealous of. The bonus is that I haven’t been sick since this experience either, which is probably against all odds. 

That afternoon we went to visit an orphanage and teach a short English lesson. I left wanting to take every orphan home with me. Thai children are irresistibly cute and they loved us. I spent about 45 minutes straight in the hot sun doing nothing but bumping kids up and down on my lap, which they never got sick of, even if I couldn’t feel my thighs afterwards.

Finally, after a crazy Thai bus station experience, an 11-hour ride on a pretty amazing bus that had reclining seats, a stewardess, a hot meal at a random restaurant at 1:30am, and Thai karaoke music videos, Kelly, Shaleas and I have arrived in Tha Wang Pha. Our coordinators (Patarin and Amporn) met us and broke the news that we cannot move into our apartment yet and are stuck in a guesthouse for about two weeks (but who knows, on Thai time that could mean anything).
Kelly and I are sharing a room that we have already had to rid of enormous spiders, a massive cockroach, and an ant infestation. But other than that….it’s still pretty annoying. The room is actually ok, it’s just frustrating since we have to continue living out of a suitcase, and school starts next week. Also, the shower is the bathroom. So each time we shower, the toilet, sink, and anything else in the bathroom gets soaked. But we have a Western toilet, which trust me is a blessing.

We saw the long boat racing in Nan on Sunday, which was fun. It’s one of the things this area is most known for, and we managed to catch the last day, which was lucky.

We are clearly the only white people for miles because we get treated like celebrities everywhere we go. At the boat event several people took pictures of us, and one guy even videotaped us. Everyone who can speak a little bit of English makes an effort to talk to us though, and last night we went out to dinner with Patarin, her husband and bunch of his friends who all had at least eight whiskeys each, and they spent the evening teaching us a lot of new Thai words, although I can’t remember most of them. I'm not sure if that's because of the whiskey or the completely foreign language. We rode home sitting in the bed of Patarin’s pick-up which was amazing because the weather in the evenings up here is perfect, and the sky is full of stars, more than I've ever seen thanks to my city-dwelling life. There's not much to see in the skies of London, New York, Baltimore or Boston I'm afraid.

There’s a good market five minutes from our guesthouse, which we will be buying everything from toiletries, clothes, school supplies, and food from since we have no kitchen. It’s going to take a few days to adjust to this place, but all in all Tha Wang Pha is a really nice area, as is Nan (the main city, about half an hour drive from here). In order to get around, it’s becoming more and more clear that our only option is going to be renting or possibly buying motorbikes. Absolutely everyone here has a motorbike of some sort, and the public transportation seems to be very sparse, if it exists at all, so we’ll be looking into that pretty soon.

That’s it for now. I’m here for a week, possibly going to Chang Mai for a couple of days if we can make it, and then school starts on November 3rd! I’ve already met one boy who goes to the school and also works in the market; he’s in the highest grade and spoke relatively fluent English so that’s a good sign!

I’ve tried to post a few photos (hopefully it has worked!). There are a lot more, but I’m borrowing Kelly’s thumb drive to upload these at an internet café so the rest will have to wait I’m afraid.

My future mode of transporation: literally everyone has one.

Thai lesson #2:

One = Neung
Two = Song
Three = Saam
Four = Sii
Five = Haa
Six = Hok
Seven = Jet
Eight = Baad
Nine = Gow
Ten = Siib

Sawatdee ka!

Whiter skin in just 14 days!

Just a quick post since I'm actually not sure when I'll next be on this thing. Tomorrow I'm off on a my two day trip to ride elephants/go bamboo rafting/visit an orphanage, then on Saturday we leave for our sites where my internet may be slightly limited, I don't know yet. 

Tonight I meet my school coordinator and hopefully get all my questions answered about what I'm doing and what to expect, including what to wear. All the days of the week have a colour here which I love, so that's going to take some of the guesswork out of what to put on each morning! 

Monday - Yellow

Tuesday - Pink

Wednesday - Green

Thursday - Orange

Friday - Blue

Saturday - Purple

Sunday - Red

There is a specific yellow polo shirt that a lot of Thai people wear on Mondays with a royal emblem on it, because the king's birthday is on a Monday, so every Monday they all wear this shirt to show their love for the king. There's an equivalent shirt in pink for Tuesdays because the most popular princess was born on a Tuesday, but it's not as common as the yellow ones.

Other things I've learned: 

Everyone assumes you're rich if you're white, but any price can be bartered and brought down, including camera chargers in a camera store inside the BIGGEST mall ever (called MBK....massive). My brand new camera charger chose to break immediately after entering this country, but as I said, the woman selling me my new one and I had a little discussion and we completed a nice little transaction.

Just as Americans/Brits try to be more tan by buying sunless tanning lotions, the Thais buy skin whitening lotions. Vaseline have large billboard advertisements all over the place promising whiter skin in 14 days. 

Porn means beauty in Thai, so a lot of beauty parlours have the word 'porn' in them, and a lot of women have it added to the end of their name as well. This fact causes many smile and giggles from naive foreigners.

Some Thai phrases that don't work when translated directly into English:

"I speak English snake snake fish fish." (means I speak very little English)

"You are sweet mouth" (smooth talker)

"Banana story" (very easy)

"You old man snake head" (dirty old man!)

You have heart water (you're very kind)

That's it for now! I'll post again whenever I can to tell you about the elephants!!! I'm so excited!!!! Can you tell?

Sawatdee ka!

Ping pong like you've never seen before.....

Sawatdee ka! (that means 'hello' or 'goodbye'  )

So I've been in Bangkok for a couple of days now and it is completely insane. Sunday was my first day of orientation. We had a 'welcome to Thailand' talk by our coordinator Phil, who is really nice although he seems reluctant to give us any information about having too much fun. I think he's scared that we'll hold him liable if we get into trouble. For a guy in charge of 60ish 20-somethings for a week he seems pretty tightly wound.

We also had our first teacher training lesson which was interesting; I'm hoping to pick up some ideas as to how on earth I'm supposed to teach these children. Then we had out first Thai lesson. Our Thai teacher is really hilarious, which helps, and she's been teaching us pretty useful Thai phrases that we need to know in everyday life, although they are all pretty hard to pronounce. The sawatdee ka is basically all I have mastered so far!

I've become friends with four other girls here, so Sunday night, the 5 of us plus my roommate at the hotel, Masha, and another girl, Emily, went out to dinner, and then the fun began.

We had some yummy curries for dinner, so far no complaints about the food at all, although I think by the time I get back I won't ever want to look at rice again. 

Our hotel happens to be quite near the red light district (Phil at least did that right), so we walked through and got bombarded by street promoters holding out what are essentially menus showing you all the things you can see inside their clubs. The club doors were all open, so we could see dozens of women standing up on these platforms just waiting to be hired I suppose. They really were jut waiting. I can't say I've ever visited a strip club in the west, but I imagine that if you peeked in the door you'd see women with beautiful bodies doing seemingly impossible things with their bodies and a pole. In Bangkok all you see are some rather unremarkable looking girls just standing. Almost, or completely naked. Doing nothing. They clearly missed the marketing course.

Anyway, the menu is perhaps too graphic to directly quote here, but it essentially described all the different things the women were able to do with their womanly region. I think I should censor this blog a little, so for more details you'll have to e-mail/facebook message me. Just think ping pong balls, cigarettes, bananas and so much more.

At the end of the street, we found a place called the Happy Beer Garden where we sat and were served by our bartender/new friend Joy who preceded to get even drunker than us. We were also joined by a small Thai boy, I'm guessing about age 7, who was originally trying to sell us stuff, but ended up just hanging out and being really adorable and hilarious. Very wholesome environment for a child.

By the end of a couple of beers at the Happy Beer Garden, five of us decided to see what these red light girls had to offer. It was just something that had to be done while in Thailand. You may have heard all the stories about 'ping pong' or maybe you've seen it if you've been here, but we had to see for ourselves. 

So that's what we did. It was certainly ping pong like you've never seen before....to say the least. We're still trying to figure out how it's physically possible. Before leaving we got hassled by these two very intimidating Thai women who worked there and tried to completely rip us off with the bill. What I've learned is that everything here is negotiable and that every Thai person sees a foreigner and seems to automatically multiple their prices by about 20, so you have to be pretty aggressive if you want to get a good deal anywhere.  

And that was my first night in Thailand!! I know I've left a lot for the imagination there, but I know people like my parents are reading this (hi mum and dad!), but do use your imagination!

Tuesday we went on a group field trip to see the Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha. The palace was really amazing. Incredibly ornate and really beautiful. Almost everything is covered in gold leaf, so in the 31 degree humid heat and sun, the place was really fantastic to see, if not a bit hot! The emerald buddha is in fact made of one solid piece of jade and was set in a temple inside the palace. My friend Lisa and I got front row seats to kneel down in front of it. You had to make sure that your bare soles of your feet (you had to take your shoes off) never faced the buddha, or the guards told you off.

Tonight, we just ended up having a few drinks on the roof of the hotel with a bunch of other people from the programme; the other participants are all really great, we're all getting along very well, and there's even one other English girl here from Kent! After last night, we were up for something a bit more low key, so hanging out by the pool was nice! Although after the stories we told, a few people went off to see for themselves what this ping pong was all about. We were pretty proud of being the first group to brave the dark side of this city. 

That's it for now. Tomorrow's another long day of teacher training and Thai lessons, then possibly a Thai boxing match in the evening. On Thursday and Friday I'll be going on my two day trek and riding elephants!!!

I miss you all terribly, please don't forget about me - I desperately want e-mail updates on your lives, even if it's super boring, I need  contact with the Western world!! Send me your mailing addresses, and as soon as I know mine, which I still don't, I promise to pass it along!

Sawatdee ka!

 

Meeting new people

This hotel is pretty much full of people from my programme, so it's going to be a few days until I really get the full Thai experience since I'm going to be surrounded by Americans for the next week.

Had dinner with two girls from the Boston area, go figure I manage to find girls from the city I lived in for four years! It's kind of like being in the first year of university again, everyone's just running around the hallways desperate to meet new people. At least it's a good conversation starter. If they're clearly Western (i.e. white...haven't seen any other ethnic groups represented as of yet) and look as wide eyed as me, it's a pretty safe bet to ask "are you here with CIEE?" 

Goodnight!

Bangkok!!!

After a very very long day of traveling, I am finally in Bangkok!

By the way, unless they go bankrupt (which may happen any day now...) I would highly recommend Jet Airways - I had a pretty decent flight. 

I met a girl on my flight, Lucy, who I hung out with in Mumbai during our connection; she'd been to Thailand before and helped calm my fears a little bit, and gave me a few tips on how to get around, plus she gave me a big hug which is really what I needed. I'm not suggesting that you are guaranteed to have a friendly English girl to help you out on any Jet Airways flight. Aside from meeting Lucy, I would still recommend this airline if they still exist by the time you're reading this.

At the Bangkok airport I discovered that my mobile phone is still locked, so I can't use it at the moment, and my credit/debit cards aren't working even though all my banks/credit companies know I'm here! That resulted in several minutes playing the 'how do you call the US collect from Thailand?!' game so that I could let my parents know that I am indeed still alive and well despite being slightly, okay very, overwhelmed.

Meanwhile I have 20,000 baht to play with. How stupid does that sound?? 20,000. I've never had 20,000 of any kind of currency in my hand. Except maybe in Hungary...I seem to remember the exchange rate there being pretty extreme too. But if you convert my thousands of Baht you will realise it's only about £240. 

I got a little ripped off by some taxi company to get to the hotel; I was way too out of it to do any real arguing about the price. They can be pretty scary and in your face, which is hard to combat when you've been more or less awake for two days straight.

So that's it! I'm in Thailand! Orientation starts tomorrow morning with an introduction to the Thai education system, information about my visa and stuff, then some teacher training and my first Thai language lesson!

On Monday we're going to visit the Emerald Buddha Temple and the Grand Palace before more training and a lesson on how not to die in Thailand (I think they have a better name for it...)

Tuesday and Wednesday will be more training, language lessons, and seminars about living in Thailand, then on Thursday we go on a two night trip to Kanchanaburi where we're going elephant trekking and bamboo rafting!! Then we are visiting a children's orphanage village, where we have to present a lesson. So I'm really excited about that! Especially the elephants!! 

I just had the best nap ever, and now I may venture downstairs to try to find food. I'm still waiting for my roommate to arrive, I hope she has as much luggage as me so that I don't feel too stupid. :) 

I MISS YOU ALL!! Please keep in touch, and send me your address and I'll try to send lots of postcards! (marianne.sheila@gmail.com)