(no subject)
I have 2 weeks left in Korea. I'm planning on being stateside through the holidays this year so that I can be with Gran for the Important Stuff, and then getting a Public School position so that I can have long vacations for more visits stateside. That being said I'll have something like 4 months to fill and one never knows what opportunities might come knocking. I'm actually sad I won't get to meet Sarah, the Irish girl who's replacing me, because she seems really cool from our gmail chats. Also, on friday my boss told me the school was moving to a new location, and this monday I started teaching 5 minutes away from the old location. The new school is better. Go figure it's the last 2 weeks that I get to teach here.
THAILAND
AWESOME. If you go anywhere in Asia, Thailand should be high on the list.
The whole country is gorgeous and verdant.
Bangkok (No dirty jokes, please)
Bangkok is insane and has the best shopping I've ever seen (I want to move there just so I can get awesome designer furniture for $100 a pop). After overnighting in the airport and getting morning massages we left to explore the big city. We met up with El's parents who are traveling in Asia (her parent's are awesome - her mom's from the South, so we had a nice conversation about just how odd the South can be. El's dad is French Canadian (political correctness labels him a Francophone Canadian?) They're good folk.
I saw the Grand Palace, one of the coolest places ever. It's swarming with minute detail and glitter, two of my favorite things. I got ripped off by my tour guide, who took me to 3 different 'factories' (Jems, Tailoring, and Carpets) where they tried to sell me stuff. The guy at the tailoring thing didn't want to take no for an answer. I look at this experience as a right of passage. Everyone gets ripped off in Thailand at least once, be it by a took took or a taxi driver. The traffic was so crap that it took over an hour to get back to El's parent's hotel, and we left only just in time to catch our flight out.
Phuket
Our cheap (in every sense of the word) flight from Bangkok to Phuket got in late, and the 2 metered taxis at the airport refused to go anywhere for less than 500 baht (roughly 15$) which pissed us off at the time, but in retrospect is about what we would have paid if the meter had been on. And our hotel was AWESOME. Aochalong Villa and Spa is a little slice of paradise on the Aochalong bay, and we had a colorful view of the bay, a slice of beach, and the neighboring shacks with locals who's boats were tethered to the shore near us. On the dirt road going out to it we saw a water buffalo, and several of the bird-house-sized elaborate mini-shrines. We spent one of the 3 days we ended up staying there (we couldn't reserve a place on Phi Phi island for earlier, which turned out to be something we shouldn't have worried about during the low season, but live and learn) sunning in the pool by the beach. Another day we went to a touristy Thai Experience place, way overdone but enjoyable none-the-less. I got to help make a yummy Thai salad with guava and spices, ride an elephant, hold hands with a monkey, and got a 'massage' from a baby elephant - it stepped lightly on my back, which actually did feel nice, plus we went river kayaking and got to see the monkeys come down to the riverside at low tide. This was not to be our only monkey encounter.
The last night in Phuket we went to Patong Beach, which is a happening place. Tons of market shopping, good food (my favorite was a crepe with nutella and banana inside, made fresh for me), bars, lady-boys out in the middle of the street who were much prettier than the average thai girl. We resolved to come back for our one night we had to spend in Phuket on the way back to Bangkok. As we were leaving our hotel the next day I spotted what at first looked like an odd rock formation on top of a distant hill, only to realize that it was actually a giant stone Buddha. How cool is that?
Ko Phi Phi (aka the place where "The Beach" was filmed and the tsunami took out en force)
We took a ferry to Phi Phi the next day, and got to see the waters turn from vaguely blue-green to deep turquoise as we traveled. Met up with some other english teachers who were from Seoul and we all watched the flying fish jumping out of the water and skimming away from the ship, just slightly too fast to follow.
Phi Phi was a slice of paradise. Touristy and gimmicky, but paradise none-the-less. Tall palm trees, gorgeous tropical vegetation, white-sand beaches and bright turquoise waters, the bay between the islands swarming with colorfully be-ribboned long-boats. The sky was really blue again. The first night we got dinner at a restaurant on the beach (as were all restaurants on Ko Phi Phi), then got thai massages with tiger balm. On our way back to our hotel, a solid 20 minute hike that included a little mountain climbing, we passed Hippies Bar on the beach (a collection of circular bars thatched with grass), heard good mood music, and took one of the chairs that had been set up around the makeshift stage they'd 'built' on the beach (it was a flat square of sand covered in a board with a trench dug around it, but the plethora of lights that had been bolted haphazardly and in great numbers to a live tree near by gave it a really neat vibe). A native islander was sitting on a stool in the middle of the stage covering whiny songs by the likes of Travis that perfectly fit the mellowness of the waves washing up on the beach. Between the beers we bought and the free shots for Ladies, I was feeling at one with the universe. One moment that will always stick out to me is sitting back in an unreasonably comfy plastic chair as the tide washed in over my feet, staring up at the clear nighttime sky. You can't normally see stars in Korea, so it packed a double punch for me.
Around midnight they started a Fire Show - men and women, Thai and foreign, playing with balls of fire leashed on long wires, or at the ends of long sticks, or covering long nung-chuck type gear, set to techno and fast-beat rock and alternative. I have video. It includes when I fell out of my chair due to its left legs sinking into the sand. The alcohol might also have factored into it a little bit.
The next day, our one full day on the island, it poured rain. Since this was the first rainy day we'd had on our trip and we were in Thailand during the rainy season, I wasn't too bothered - it delayed our long boat trip, but we still went out. The long boats are the fishing boats that have bright ribbons and flowers festooned on their bows, and a fisherman-cum-tour guide took 10 of us out to Shark Point to snorkel. It was cool, but the real snorkel fun came later. We went to Bamboo Island after that, sat on a beach that had no electricity and a long line of shacks and ate the rice that our guide gave us, sharing it with his family who was spending time in one of the shacks. They cut up some pineapple and watermellon for us, as well, and we took that to Monkey Beach, on the unpopulated side of PhiPhi island (we had a good view of it from our hotel across the bay) and fed the monkeys. One of them climbed up on the girl in front of me and stole the pineapple I was holding. Smart little git - the other monkeys wouldn't approach him while he was on a person.
Next we went to Maya Beach (Mayami, according to our guide ;) which was where some of The Beach was filmed. It's tiny, smaller than Phi Phi, but with touring rock faces making a tight circular bay and some insane rock formations. We got out and explored this drop of tropical splendor, and it was creepy. The jungle muted the sound, and all we could hear was a stuffy silence. There were Tsunami evacuation route signs up everywhere, and empty party spots that, come the high season, will be filled with people. In the bathroom there was a crab sitting in a drainage hole low in the wall, so still I didn't notice it at first. Climbing through a hole in the rock face on the other side of the island put me out in an area where there were tons of brightly colored but belligerent crabs. They were turquoise with touches of orange and yellow.
We motored around the island to the exact place I'd been with the crabs and went snorkeling, and THAT was one of the coolest things ever. I got to see tropical fish upclose and personal and in neon technicolor. I saw giant brain coral and festive urchins, giant clams and eel and schools of fish previously only seen in an aquarium. The guide fed them and those of us who were brave (or stupid) enough jumped right in. I have pictures, thanks to El, of me staring down into a swarm of fish.
We finished the day by going past the viking caves, caves just at the waterline and above where people still live.
Back on the island we got massages, and during that the rain was so strong it knocked out the power and brought some thatching down from the roof. It landed on our shoes, and I got bit by something when I put them back on. I still have a couple of little red spots.
Leaving Phi Phi broke our hearts. I plan on going back, probably once every 5 years. Seeing how much has been rebuilt after the tsunami gave me great respect for the locals and the foreigners who pitched in to the rebuilding.
Phuket Again
We spent our last night in a cheap hotel on the beach in Patong, and I took the opportunity to get my name tattooed on my foot in Thai. It's small, tasteful, and will identify me if I'm ever in a boat crash and miraculously wash up in Thailand (one can dream). I'll always remember the bar across the street with the junk metal statues of Alien and Predator in front of the entrances - it was the FBI (Finest Bar In Patong) and I stared at it hard to distract myself from the pain. Note to self - feet are sensitive places to get needled.
Our hotel failed to give us a wakeup call, and didn't know enough english to tell us our cabbie was there, so by the time we got downstairs and realized we were an hour late we had to call the cabbie to get him to come back. We barely got onto our plane.
Bangkok Again
We spent the entire day (and I mean literally - from 11am to 9pm) at MBK, THE SHOPPING MALL of Bangkok. The WHOLE day. We shopped, got mani-pedis, got haircuts and vitamin treatments, and watched Mummy 3 (after 20 minutes of ads PLUS standing for the national anthem set to footage of the King - the Thais love their King). I've never done so much hardcore shopping in my life, and I was restrained compared to El. I have 3 new sets of turquoise jewelry, a new bracelet, several new pairs of shoes, new jeans that were tailored to fit me in front of my eyes... the list continues. We barely had enough money to get to the airport.
Upon returning I slept for 17 hours straight.
The Food (because it deserves its very own category)
Thai food kicks ass. We had the tourist-gimmicky green curry and coconut milk yellow curry almost everywhere. We had the yummy nutella-and-fruit crepe-cakes everywhere. We had sticky rice and mango. We had pineapple. Lots of pineapple. I've never been the biggest fan of it, but after fresh pineapple in Thailand, I've found a new love.
Next time I want to go to one of the full moon parties on the northern islands, and I want to go to Crabi, and I want to go to the artists village. Thailand, I'm coming back to you!
THAILAND
AWESOME. If you go anywhere in Asia, Thailand should be high on the list.
The whole country is gorgeous and verdant.
Bangkok (No dirty jokes, please)
Bangkok is insane and has the best shopping I've ever seen (I want to move there just so I can get awesome designer furniture for $100 a pop). After overnighting in the airport and getting morning massages we left to explore the big city. We met up with El's parents who are traveling in Asia (her parent's are awesome - her mom's from the South, so we had a nice conversation about just how odd the South can be. El's dad is French Canadian (political correctness labels him a Francophone Canadian?) They're good folk.
I saw the Grand Palace, one of the coolest places ever. It's swarming with minute detail and glitter, two of my favorite things. I got ripped off by my tour guide, who took me to 3 different 'factories' (Jems, Tailoring, and Carpets) where they tried to sell me stuff. The guy at the tailoring thing didn't want to take no for an answer. I look at this experience as a right of passage. Everyone gets ripped off in Thailand at least once, be it by a took took or a taxi driver. The traffic was so crap that it took over an hour to get back to El's parent's hotel, and we left only just in time to catch our flight out.
Phuket
Our cheap (in every sense of the word) flight from Bangkok to Phuket got in late, and the 2 metered taxis at the airport refused to go anywhere for less than 500 baht (roughly 15$) which pissed us off at the time, but in retrospect is about what we would have paid if the meter had been on. And our hotel was AWESOME. Aochalong Villa and Spa is a little slice of paradise on the Aochalong bay, and we had a colorful view of the bay, a slice of beach, and the neighboring shacks with locals who's boats were tethered to the shore near us. On the dirt road going out to it we saw a water buffalo, and several of the bird-house-sized elaborate mini-shrines. We spent one of the 3 days we ended up staying there (we couldn't reserve a place on Phi Phi island for earlier, which turned out to be something we shouldn't have worried about during the low season, but live and learn) sunning in the pool by the beach. Another day we went to a touristy Thai Experience place, way overdone but enjoyable none-the-less. I got to help make a yummy Thai salad with guava and spices, ride an elephant, hold hands with a monkey, and got a 'massage' from a baby elephant - it stepped lightly on my back, which actually did feel nice, plus we went river kayaking and got to see the monkeys come down to the riverside at low tide. This was not to be our only monkey encounter.
The last night in Phuket we went to Patong Beach, which is a happening place. Tons of market shopping, good food (my favorite was a crepe with nutella and banana inside, made fresh for me), bars, lady-boys out in the middle of the street who were much prettier than the average thai girl. We resolved to come back for our one night we had to spend in Phuket on the way back to Bangkok. As we were leaving our hotel the next day I spotted what at first looked like an odd rock formation on top of a distant hill, only to realize that it was actually a giant stone Buddha. How cool is that?
Ko Phi Phi (aka the place where "The Beach" was filmed and the tsunami took out en force)
We took a ferry to Phi Phi the next day, and got to see the waters turn from vaguely blue-green to deep turquoise as we traveled. Met up with some other english teachers who were from Seoul and we all watched the flying fish jumping out of the water and skimming away from the ship, just slightly too fast to follow.
Phi Phi was a slice of paradise. Touristy and gimmicky, but paradise none-the-less. Tall palm trees, gorgeous tropical vegetation, white-sand beaches and bright turquoise waters, the bay between the islands swarming with colorfully be-ribboned long-boats. The sky was really blue again. The first night we got dinner at a restaurant on the beach (as were all restaurants on Ko Phi Phi), then got thai massages with tiger balm. On our way back to our hotel, a solid 20 minute hike that included a little mountain climbing, we passed Hippies Bar on the beach (a collection of circular bars thatched with grass), heard good mood music, and took one of the chairs that had been set up around the makeshift stage they'd 'built' on the beach (it was a flat square of sand covered in a board with a trench dug around it, but the plethora of lights that had been bolted haphazardly and in great numbers to a live tree near by gave it a really neat vibe). A native islander was sitting on a stool in the middle of the stage covering whiny songs by the likes of Travis that perfectly fit the mellowness of the waves washing up on the beach. Between the beers we bought and the free shots for Ladies, I was feeling at one with the universe. One moment that will always stick out to me is sitting back in an unreasonably comfy plastic chair as the tide washed in over my feet, staring up at the clear nighttime sky. You can't normally see stars in Korea, so it packed a double punch for me.
Around midnight they started a Fire Show - men and women, Thai and foreign, playing with balls of fire leashed on long wires, or at the ends of long sticks, or covering long nung-chuck type gear, set to techno and fast-beat rock and alternative. I have video. It includes when I fell out of my chair due to its left legs sinking into the sand. The alcohol might also have factored into it a little bit.
The next day, our one full day on the island, it poured rain. Since this was the first rainy day we'd had on our trip and we were in Thailand during the rainy season, I wasn't too bothered - it delayed our long boat trip, but we still went out. The long boats are the fishing boats that have bright ribbons and flowers festooned on their bows, and a fisherman-cum-tour guide took 10 of us out to Shark Point to snorkel. It was cool, but the real snorkel fun came later. We went to Bamboo Island after that, sat on a beach that had no electricity and a long line of shacks and ate the rice that our guide gave us, sharing it with his family who was spending time in one of the shacks. They cut up some pineapple and watermellon for us, as well, and we took that to Monkey Beach, on the unpopulated side of PhiPhi island (we had a good view of it from our hotel across the bay) and fed the monkeys. One of them climbed up on the girl in front of me and stole the pineapple I was holding. Smart little git - the other monkeys wouldn't approach him while he was on a person.
Next we went to Maya Beach (Mayami, according to our guide ;) which was where some of The Beach was filmed. It's tiny, smaller than Phi Phi, but with touring rock faces making a tight circular bay and some insane rock formations. We got out and explored this drop of tropical splendor, and it was creepy. The jungle muted the sound, and all we could hear was a stuffy silence. There were Tsunami evacuation route signs up everywhere, and empty party spots that, come the high season, will be filled with people. In the bathroom there was a crab sitting in a drainage hole low in the wall, so still I didn't notice it at first. Climbing through a hole in the rock face on the other side of the island put me out in an area where there were tons of brightly colored but belligerent crabs. They were turquoise with touches of orange and yellow.
We motored around the island to the exact place I'd been with the crabs and went snorkeling, and THAT was one of the coolest things ever. I got to see tropical fish upclose and personal and in neon technicolor. I saw giant brain coral and festive urchins, giant clams and eel and schools of fish previously only seen in an aquarium. The guide fed them and those of us who were brave (or stupid) enough jumped right in. I have pictures, thanks to El, of me staring down into a swarm of fish.
We finished the day by going past the viking caves, caves just at the waterline and above where people still live.
Back on the island we got massages, and during that the rain was so strong it knocked out the power and brought some thatching down from the roof. It landed on our shoes, and I got bit by something when I put them back on. I still have a couple of little red spots.
Leaving Phi Phi broke our hearts. I plan on going back, probably once every 5 years. Seeing how much has been rebuilt after the tsunami gave me great respect for the locals and the foreigners who pitched in to the rebuilding.
Phuket Again
We spent our last night in a cheap hotel on the beach in Patong, and I took the opportunity to get my name tattooed on my foot in Thai. It's small, tasteful, and will identify me if I'm ever in a boat crash and miraculously wash up in Thailand (one can dream). I'll always remember the bar across the street with the junk metal statues of Alien and Predator in front of the entrances - it was the FBI (Finest Bar In Patong) and I stared at it hard to distract myself from the pain. Note to self - feet are sensitive places to get needled.
Our hotel failed to give us a wakeup call, and didn't know enough english to tell us our cabbie was there, so by the time we got downstairs and realized we were an hour late we had to call the cabbie to get him to come back. We barely got onto our plane.
Bangkok Again
We spent the entire day (and I mean literally - from 11am to 9pm) at MBK, THE SHOPPING MALL of Bangkok. The WHOLE day. We shopped, got mani-pedis, got haircuts and vitamin treatments, and watched Mummy 3 (after 20 minutes of ads PLUS standing for the national anthem set to footage of the King - the Thais love their King). I've never done so much hardcore shopping in my life, and I was restrained compared to El. I have 3 new sets of turquoise jewelry, a new bracelet, several new pairs of shoes, new jeans that were tailored to fit me in front of my eyes... the list continues. We barely had enough money to get to the airport.
Upon returning I slept for 17 hours straight.
The Food (because it deserves its very own category)
Thai food kicks ass. We had the tourist-gimmicky green curry and coconut milk yellow curry almost everywhere. We had the yummy nutella-and-fruit crepe-cakes everywhere. We had sticky rice and mango. We had pineapple. Lots of pineapple. I've never been the biggest fan of it, but after fresh pineapple in Thailand, I've found a new love.
Next time I want to go to one of the full moon parties on the northern islands, and I want to go to Crabi, and I want to go to the artists village. Thailand, I'm coming back to you!