Bangkok, D33-34: Sleeper Train & Double Date

Monday morning rolls around and we think we’ll go to Chiang Rai. Everyone we mention it to says it’s quite dull and we should only stay a day or two. I am NOT taking another horrific bus ride for a dull day or two.

The next logical thing to do is travel to Luang Prabang, venturing into Laos by way of 15 hour van ride or four hour bus ride plus two days on a boat. Hmmm.

We brainstorm. What sounds nice? We’ve been in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Pai. We have time- we’re not expected back in the US until July for my sister’s wedding. We’re closest to Laos, and after Laos we’d go to Cambodia, and then we’d venture to Vietnam; That’s the best route to the beaches in the south.

Ohhhh the beachessssss. We close our eyes, envision where we want to be in a week, and it’s not in a land-locked country. The beach it is. In two minutes we’ve completely changed our travel plans for the next few months. Krabi, we’re coming for you. 

Chiang Mai--> Bangkok --> Krabi

The new plan is to head to southern Thailand, flying into Krabi. In two weeks we'll fly very south to Indonesia, get to Bali and stay for a few weeks. After that we'll make our way back up through Malaysia. (Of course, this is all tentative.) And just like that we book an overnight train back to Bangkok. Heck yes, we got a train ticket ($25 each)! It leaves at 4PM and arrives at 6AM.

We kill time by getting $6, one-hour leg rubs. We don’t deserve them, I know, but it feels good to be bad.

We get to the train station easy-peasy. We find our bunk and share a “room” with two chinese girls. The train is pretty clean and the beds are surprisingly padded. 

We grab some nasty train food and watch the sunset through the window. There’s not a lot to do on the train. We retire to our beds and read until about 9PM when the French next door stop yapping. Then all is quiet and everyone starts to sleep.

12AM- Boop, boop. Boop, boop. Bing bong. The Chinese girl laying across from Ian is... texting? With sound effects and keyboard clicks turned way up? Huh?! 2AM- The railway worker on the other side of our compartment starts playing a phone game, replete with 8-bit explosion noises. What?! Asian cultures be loving their phone sounds. It’s totes the norm, and I’m totes annoyed...

Overall the train was a great way to travel. It arrives on time without a hiccup. It’s 6AM and we get a taxi to hotel iCheckInn, near the no-vacancy Atlanta. At a stop light the cab driver CLEANS HIS EARS WITH A TOOTHPICK. I watch in horror and he gets chunks of wax off of the toothpick, rolls it into little balls and wipes it on his change in his middle console. This happens at every traffic light. The fare was 91Baht and Ian gave him 100. Nine waxy coins later, we’re at the hotel. 

It’s about 7AM and we can’t check in until 2PM. We’ve gotten pretty good at killing time at this point. At 10AM I’ve done all I can to stay put. I leave Ian with the bags and go to a mall to get a haircut.

The haircut is 280 baht ($9) and they keep pushing 2,000 baht products on me. I keep saying no, lying that I’m allergic, but they keep pushing. “You hair so dry I show you” and then she maliciously tugs at my curls, breaking the hair to show me. I say “OK, thank you but I only want the haircut." The lady brings me more products and I decline, restating that I could die because of an allergic reaction. She’s not buying it. She holds an open vial of serum above my head and says “I’m just gonna put this treatment on, only 1,000 baht more” and I have to sternly say “Don’t you dare” with an evil-eye. That’s when she begrudgingly gives me a cut, spitefully cutting it shorter than I had asked. She gave me a nice four-inch “trim”, all the while loudly talking smack about my thriftiness.

Whatever! I look fly with my $9 cut. I text Ian to meet me for lunch. He puts the bags in the room and we decide to go to our Michelin-rated pork dumpling spot. 

I walk there and run into Laura and Beno! WHAT ARE THE ODDS? They flew into Bangkok from the islands that morning. We trained in from Chiang Mai that morning. Crazy luck that we ran into each other! They are staying in one of the top-rated hotels in Bangkok, a total splurge. They invite us to dinner at their hotel. Since they have a kitchen, they’re going to cook for us. Dinner party!

Night rolls around and we meet at Laura and Beno's hotel, the Oriental Residence. It's about a 15 minute walk from our place. We tell the receptionist we're here to see them and she calls up. So fancy. 

They are amazing hosts! Their rooms is spectacular and offers amazing views. The bathroom has a vanity. It's beautiful. We have beer and chips and dip. We go for a swim in their pool. Then we have garlic bread and carbonara. Laura is an amazing cook. They have us try Swiss chocolate (I pocket some) and Beno makes dessert: ice-cream with sweet raspberries on top. We stay for like five hours just hanging out and talking about America, Switzerland, our families and good youtube videos. It was a legit double-date and a relief to feel out of Asia for a moment. They are my favorite.

(LifeProTip: Don't put Swiss chocolate in your pocket.)

Chiang Mai, D30-32: International Flower Festival

 

Chiang Mai centers around tourism all year, but it's main two draws are it's Lantern Festival in November and Flower Festival in February. From what we could tell we weren't being charged any surge pricing for high-season, but we did notice and unusual amount of traffic and fighting through crowds this weekend.

Opening ceremonies began on Friday evening, followed by the Miss Chiang Mai Flower Festival Beauty Pageant and the Miss International Chiang Mai Flower Festival Beaty Pageant competitions. YESSSsss.

We head towards Nong Buak Haad Park where we're told the main action is. The streets are lined with vendors (more than usual) that sell things you’d find at a county fair: questionable electronics, bracelets with your name on it, cowboy hats, etc. 

Fake Poo "Hand Made"

There are a bunch of staged flower power photo opportunities, yeeee! I make Ian wait in line with me to take this pic:

He jumps on and we're about to take a fake flower riding selfie when we tip over the fake moto and eat it slo-mo. The line goes "ooohhhh!” and we just ran away in different directions. What?

We find some vague information about the pageant being at 7PM at the park stage but we get there and see a college (high school) having their big orchestra performance. No one mentions the beauty pageant and they don’t look like dance moms in the crowd. Damn it, this was one of things I was looking forward to! We search for another place the pageant could be held.

There are pop up booths and exhibitions to educate the public about the flowers of Thailand. There are competitions for best orchids, crown of thorns, potted flowers and so on. We return to those things later, for now we're on a mission to see the pageant. I'm ever-trying to catch up to Ian’s bobbing white head over the crowd. We ask anyone we can where the pageant is being held and no one knows. I decide we head to Tha Pae Gate on another corner of the city, acting off of a hunch that there would be another stage there.

Sure enough there's a huge stage and the pageant has not started yet. It's only 7:45PM and the marquee says it starts at 7PM, and so Thai Time tells us we won’t miss anything if we get a bite to eat. We come back at 8:30 and they are announcing contestant #3 out of maybe 30. Right off the bat I notice something is wrong: we're at the International Flower Festival Competition. It's a group of 30 dumpy girls in their early twenties who have absolutely zero pageant experience, or pizzazz. I first think it's a bummer because I wanted to see a real pageant competition, but it turned out to be a complete comedy show. 

It must have been an open competition and I BLEW IT for not signing up. First of all, I'm 5'3 and a size 8, and would have been one of the skinnier and taller girls of the group. Secondly, I've learned a thing or two from Honey Boo Boo about stage presence, and these chodes had none.

The talent portion was a train wreck. I could have farted in my hand and put up a better show. Some highlights: girl singing Pocahontas's "Colors of the Wind" and getting her mic cut off, a contestant trying to kick a soccer ball in the air to herself but in the long Thai pageant skirt, and this:

Ohh I have a high tolerance for awkward but this took the cake. The couple hosting the pageant had to interpret everything and it was obvious they were just mocking the contestants. About 80 percent of the participants were American, adding to the cringe.

It came down to the top four- two from America, one from South Korea(“Careeerrrr”, as the female host styled it), and one from Japan. This mix represented all the contestants’ countries except for one Canadian, who had a painful talent portion playing an acoustic guitar in the traditional long skirt with no stool to sit on. She literally couldn’t get a grip.

(Interestingly enough, the top four contestants were also the prettiest.)

The question portion was useless, as many of the contestants didn’t speak Thai and some didn’t speak Thai or English (the Japanese girl) so the host had to mime the question. The one who was crowned and the runner-up contestants had these toughies: “How do you like the International Beauty Pageant Competition, and are we doing a good job?” And “If you win tonight, who will you call first?” (Answers: "Good, this is so beautiful!" and “My mom.”)

It came down to the one girl who had any sort of talent at all- some chick from USA who was a circus performer and did her hula-hoop dance that was surely choreographed for Burning Man. 

~~~

Other than the beauty pageant I was really looking forward to seeing the parade. From what we had heard, it was supposed to be like the Rose Bowl Parade with marching bands and flower floats.

We wake up at 7:30AM on Saturday for the Flower Festival Parade. We walk to the starting point at 8AM, you know, the time it's supposed to start. (You may start seeing themes in these blog posts, like traveling to other towns SUCK, lack of information and misinformation is EVERYWHERE, and parades are never on time.) We wait about 45 minutes and see that it's getting a little more crowded around us, so we move closer to the middle of the route where no one is.

We find a nice bench and park it there. At 9:30AM the road still isn't closed off and we're just sitting by a highway. Ugh. 9:45, an hour and forty-five minutes after it should have started, we see the beginning of the parade!

There was literally no one lining the street where we were when the parade started. A group of 15 Chinese people are on the opposite side of the road from us. When they see the parade start, they cross the road and stand right in front of our bench. There isn't a soul 30 feet to the left or right of us. I couldn't believe it, and I didn't think you would either, so I ran across the road and took a pic:

More tourists started trickling to the road. So many Chinese tourists.

Similar to the parade in Bangkok, assholes would just run into the road and take pictures with the performers. People just climbed on the nice cars or floats to take the perfect selfie. We watched again and again as this group of ladies held up every single float to take pics. There were five minute gaps between each float or band or performance. It really annoyed me knowing that this is why the parade was taking forever.

The floats that were covered in flowers looked very nice and very similar. They spelled Brunei wrong in flowers:

 

There were knife-wielding tots and teenagers marching along in different traditional Thai outfits. A bunch of them were also bored with the length of the parade... I could tell by the way their heads were buried in their cellphones. The bands were OK, just a bunch of high schoolers playing La Bamba and stuff. A school had Chiang Mai Flower Festival 2014 shirts on. How 2000-late.

We watched the parade for almost two hours before leaving. I am a parade lover but an hour is enough. 

On Sunday I went back to the Flower Festival while Ian got a haircut. Here I am hanging out with the King and Queen (man did Ian miss out!):

Misc pics from the weekend:

Pai, D23-28: Our Week in Pai

Before this trip and throughout I have heard about Pai (pronounced "pie"). Everyone talks about Pai as this majestic little unknown town.  Very tiny, very unknown. It's relaxing and nobody knows about it. It's so untouched, so unknown...

Yeah... OK. It's known.

Introducing my beef with Pai: it's completely overrun with tourists of the worst kind. There are travelers and artists and misfits and hippies and hipsters. There are people who walk around barefoot playing ukuleles (and to our dismay, they're mostly white with American accents).

You can see the bones of the town are beautiful and once upon a time there is no doubt it was majestic. The most recent census from 2006 records the population around 2,300. I can definitely picture its appeal then. We bike around during the day and see pretty landscape, though Thailand is in dry season:

Now? Bus after bus unloads hippies who've exchanged their shoes for dreadlocks, or Chinese families who walk around with the utmost urgency. Driving is a clusterflock too, because in China and America you drive on the right side of the road, unlike here. Furthermore, there were two Thai movies based in Pai in 2004 and 2006 that popularized the village as a tourist spot for Thai people, and while they stand out the least, it adds to the confusion of the situation. (Pai tourists, say from Bangkok, place their orders with their French waiters.) The signs are in Thai, English and Chinese. Some of the street vendors selling art are white. The bulletin boards are for yoga classes and trips to caves to meditate- all ran by white people. (No way, we're back in Tahoe!)

Wheatgrass shots? In SE Asia? Please.

 

You see people like this guy, in his cowboy hat, boots, white pants and painted yellow face. He's brought his own chair to sit by a vendor and read:

Overall, I think Pai lacks tradition and authenticity, and though it was once a quaint, peaceful village, it is now a place to shave one side of your head and befriend a stray animal. But enough of my opinion!

There are few things to do in Pai- see waterfalls, temples and hotsprings. You're charged to enter everything and you're fighting other tourists. The main draw and source of tourism is the night market.

This night market makes me question for the first time in my life: Am I over shopping? No, obviously, and I buy more scarves. This market has similar stuff to all the other markets but it has less of a pushy vibe. There are a few main streets full of food carts and art for sale.

Bugs!

Since this is more of an artsy town we were able to get a grip of caricatures done for $3-$9, and we got much more than what we paid for:

The absolute best part about Pai is the food. The streets are littered with hole-in-the-wall places. The night market covers every type of ethnic food. Every kitchen is semi-open so you're always watching the magic right before you. You make sure to order food when you're just starting to get hungry because most meals take an hour+ to get to your table. Truly, most of our days are spent trying to find things to do between meals.

Some of our favorite spots and what we ordered:

Na's- Yellow Curry, Green Curry and Chicken with Chilis and Holy Basil (THE BEST PLACE)

Fine Rice- Chicken with Chilis and Holy Basil

Top 5 Cafe- Avocado Toast

Witching Well- Anything breakfast

This Guy- Fried Pork with Chilis and Holy Basil

Art in Chai- Famous for Indian-style chai tea. (They even do open mic poetry readings on Thursdays! So artsy)

All About Coffee- Coffee

& The Best Meal of our entire trip so far is awarded to: The Curry Hut for it's "Special Curry"

Oh yes, the Special Curry. Ian went for green curry and it was also delicious... but this Special Curry! The Curry Hut was ran but one guy who was frantically cooking, cleaning, blending, taking orders and processing payments. There were five tables in his seating area and they were all full of people. He works hard for his money! I had eaten a lot of the same dishes recently so I ordered the Special Curry- 120 Baht ($4), chef's choice and served in a coconut. Ian joked that "chef's choice" was likely a concoction of "the rest" of the other stuff from the day. He ate his words and half of my meal when he saw the masterpiece: 

Before & After Pics of Best Meal Ever

It was amazing. So flavorful, so rich. It tasted like a butter-based curry but it was a coconut-cream based curry. OMG. Ian and I wolfed it down and I even drank the extra juice at the bottom. Over this superb meal we decided we'll stay in Pai a little longer. I mean, THIS FOOD. I admit I've been stubborn about Pai and I realize it's true value is the FOOD, which needs to be highlighted more than the unknownness of the town. 

Anyway, it's settled. We'll be in Pai forever. I'll eat everything and we'll live happily ever after. We bike back to AEH, I kiss Ian goodnight and have sweet dreams about curry. I toss and turn a little and then... well, then... things take a turn. 

I couldn't sleep because my stomach was starting to feel weird. Really weird. Really bad. OH CRAP. Crap, crap, crap. Vomit. Vomit, vomit. Crap, crap! The thing about food poisoning is your body just starts to reject everything, and reject it didddd!

It gets worse. Remember our little adobe abode? It connects to a bathroom that is OUTSIDE but isn't completely walled off, so Ian gets to listen to me die! It's 2AM on Monday morning here, totally pitch black, and the outside light stops working. I was dying in darkness. Worse, the sink and toilet were covered with ants, so I was dying in darkness with ants all over me and the love of my life was 2 feet away.

So am I single? No. Because about two hours in, Ian's stomach starts to feel weird. Then he starts dying. 

We take turns all night shining lights from our phones for each other to clean up. It lasts until sunrise. We lay in bed for two days and decide to get the heck out of Pai. 

As we had already motorbiked around Pai, I felt completely comfortable driving back to Chiang Mai. Remember, the road has more than 700 switchbacks and is super dangerous... but I have a punk-rock lifestyle to live up to. (Also punk-rock was Ian biking with his guitar on his back. Most punk-rock of all was the green zinc I put on my nose: )

Ian crashed on a similar road a few years back. The drivers are always in the middle of the road because the curves are so sharp, and a driver was in Ian's lane. We saw a ton of people in Pai who were heavily bandaged on one side of their body, obviously from a motorbike accident. There was also a fair amount of red spots from cars hitting... dogs? People? Definitely chickens. We passed a good amount of accidents.

So it was kind of scary, but because I logged maybe a thousand miles on an actual bike in Tahoe, I am super comfortable driving with traffic and I'm very aware of my balance. Ian keeps it slow and I follow him. Our only real hiccup went like this: Ian got a bug in his mouth--> Ian spit bug out of his mouth--> Spit nailed my right arm.

Now we are just about fully recovered and back in Chiang Mai at the Diva! Huzzah!