First days in Thailand...

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m ready to have a non-Thai food meal. Before leaving the states, I started watching my wheat intake, and it’s been great eating here overall, everything is rice based. The Thai’s must eat on a whim because everywhere you go, there are street vendors offering some type of delicacy. You simply have time to think, “hmm, I’m hungry” before you notice that there is someone standing at a street cart eagerly waiting to feed you. But, as usual, I jump ahead.

When I got on the plane in Seattle, I thought for some reason I was being punished for insisting on an isle seat so that I could stretch my legs and knees and hips. I looked around and behind me, there were two children. To the right there were several more and among the rest of the section, there was a baby or two thrown in, just to make things interesting. Before we even took off, I felt the tell tale kicking on the back of my seat. After the third time, I turned around and glared at the child. The mother caught my eye and the look in it and proceeded to rant at her children in Japanese. I did not hear another peep out of those children for the rest of the ten hour flight. None of them.

In Narita, a grungy man started talking with me about Thailand. He said he’d show me where the bus was to the area where I had booked my accommodations for the night as he had been to Thailand several times. It turned out that I was the one who had to help him find the ground transportation; the new airport opened about 6 weeks before we arrived and he didn’t know his way around it. On our way to the taxi area (it was too late for a bus), I noticed a guy with a guitar. I said something and he began to chat with us. We were all going to the same place, Kao San Road, where all of the backpackers start their journeys, so we shared a taxi. The man and his Guitar (Rob) was on his fourth trip to Thailand and he helped me find my guest house. I would have never found it without him.

I had booked the room from the U.S. and the best thing I can say about it was that it was air conditioned. The sheet and the blanket left much to be desired, but I decided it was what it was and there was nothing I could do at 1 in the morning. Rob and I wandered the streets of Kao San Road and took in the sights. In spite of the late hour, the streets were busy with youngsters out with friends, eating, chatting, loitering, and otherwise moving about. We sat and shared a plate of pad thai from a street vendor and I downed a bottle of water. The next day, Rob showed me around a bit. He took me to his favorite vegetarian restaurant in the area and we sat on the street and enjoyed Thai Curry and fresh fruit juice. I had to leave soon for the airport, so I wasn’t able to see much else, but as I sat there, I said out loud, “I feel like I’m on vacation.”

The taxi drive to the airport was a bit harrowing. There are little if any rules on the road here except that you honk when passing (sometimes uphill on the wrong side) and that chaos rules. My driver was very friendly, but I became concerned when he told me he was going to stop for gas. I was ok with it, until I felt the car shaking, they apparently mix two types of fuel in some spare tank in the trunk and then shake the car up and down to mix the fuels. I had a minor panic when I realized they had been in the trunk with my bag the whole time and I hadn’t noticed. The driver assured me that my bag was still there and since there wasn’t much I
could do but believe him, I did. And it was.

Security in the Bangkok airport for domestic flights was pretty comical. They had me unzip my bag, they peeked inside and then let me go. I was especially amused by the huge signs indicating that, “all firearms should be unloaded from this point on.” I had built in extra time for the notorious and unpredictably bad Bangkok traffic so I had to wait a good amount of time for my flight. Eventually, it became clear that the flight was delayed an hour and a half. So I lay down on the benches and took a nap. I woke up when I sensed activity in the room, and it was just in time; people were lining up to board. At the same moment I woke myself up, the guy sitting next to me had leaned over to wake me up. He started chatting with me and between the terminal and the tarmac, he decided I was to be his new charge. He asked the flight attendant if we could sit together. Thankfully it was a full flight and that was impossible.

We ended up sharing a taxi into Patong, where his hotel was. Mine was a few km out of town and the taxi driver refused to take me the extra distance. By this point I was somewhat delirious with exhaustion and hunger but we went and got some dinner together. Wasiq, my short time companion, was on business from Islamabad. I was quite put out by the way he spoke to me. He was critical of my every move, from the size of my bag, to the fact that I hadn’t carefully studied the map to find out exactly where my hotel was, to the fact that I was traveling alone. I appreciated his concern, but was quite put off by the running criticism and took my leave as quickly as possible.

The Phuket (Le) Meridian Resort was luxurious at worst. As I walked up, tired and bedraggled from my journey, Christina and her friend, Indhu, were standing at the front desk asking if I had checked in yet. As I did, I was given a necklace of jasmine flowers and one of many orchids that would be presented to us on our trip,a cool towel, and a ceramic mug of sweet lychee juice.

I had the room to myself for the night, as Giles missed his flight in Shanghai. The cool white sheets and down comforter were a far cry from the squalor of the previous evening’s accommodations, and I welcomed it with open arms. Another orchid greeted me on my pillow and yet another adorned the bath mat in front of the toilet. I did some laundry in the sink and hung it up to dry in the bathroom.

The next day, we were joined by Ian, a friend of Indhu and Christina’s from their graduate program at Carnegie Mellon. We set out in the morning to a beach described in Ian’s copy of the Lonely Planet as “absurdly beautiful”. Beautiful it was, but not absurdly. We ate lunch on the beach to a backdrop of blue water, white sand and tree-lined cliffs towering above. The beach was teeming with open air rustic bars, massage tables, and people waiting to sell you things. We spent an hour or so after lunch swimming in the wonderfully warm and clear water. I then decided I wanted a massage, so I wandered over and minutes later was treated to a nine dollar massage right on the beach.

As I finished up my massage, Indhu came over to tell me that she and Ian were going snorkeling. Ian has a calm, open, manner that opens doors left and right. In order to fill his boat, the Englishman running the snorkeling trip let us come along for half price, 250 baht or about eight dollars. The boat crew took us about 20 minutes off shore to a small island, where we were given snorkels, masks, and fins, and slices of bread and bananas to feed the fish.

It always takes me a second to get up the courage to plunge myself into the water, but once I did, I remembered how warm it was. I have slowly come to the realization that it’s not water I dislike, it’s being cold in the water. I swam off towards the island, peering down at schools of fish, bright blue starfish, and coral. As I circled the island, I was shot by the current between two rocks and back towards the boat.

Back on land, we gathered our stuff, climbed our way up to the road and negotiated a taxi ride back to the resort. Traveling by taxi can be very cheap here, assuming you are willing to haggle. Most of the taxis in Phuket are tuktuks, open air trucks with a cab where the driver sits and then a covered back with two long benches for the passengers. Tuktuks do not come equipped with meters, so you have to know approximately how much it costs to get where you’re going and then try and cajole the driver down to that price. It is a friendly process overall, but I find myself occasionally becoming insulted when they severely exaggerate their opening offer. Ironically, tuk in Thai means cheap. Luckily, there are about 10 tuktuks lined up behind the one you choose, waiting to begin the negotiating process if the first one fails to meet your and/or the driver’s fancy.

Meanwhile back at the resort, Giles had arrived from his two month stay in Shanghai where it was cold and raining, to bask in the sun and luxury. Reunited, we decided to head into town to find some dinner. Ian had rented a scooter, so he and Christina went ahead and we followed in a taxi. All of a sudden, the sky opened up and we were confronted with the most spectacular rain. The driver quickly pulled over and hopped out to unroll the plastic windows that cover the open sides of the truck during such occasions. We could only hope that Christina and Ian were OK. When we found them later at the appointed spot, we found them almost dry. They had removed themselves from the road to a phone booth for cover.

Patong is quite a hideous place. It’s essentially a tourist haven. The main road is teeming with traffic and lined with hotels, shops, restaurants, tour companies, and more. The side roads are packed with people and bars and vendors. For dinner, we sat down in a huge open restaurant down one of the side streets and paid idiculously little for a huge plate of pad thai that we all shared. Later in the evening, Ian worked his magic and we arranged to attend a Thai cooking class the following day.

In the morning, we were picked up by a driver who would take us to the cooking class, about 30 minutes away. None of us knew what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised by everything that came along. We were greeted by the instructor, a hilarious young chef who showed us to our dining table at the end of a huge covered wooden deck flanked by a small white sand beach and the ocean. It was serene. We were delighted to find the classroom and the cooking stations to be outdoors as well. We spent the day moving from the classroom, where we watched a demonstration, to the stations,where we got to make our own creations, to the dining area, where we got to eat our delicacies. We came into the class hungry and came out of it rubbing our bellies in contentment, seven courses later.

After the course, we asked to be dropped in Phuket Town. Once we were out of the tourist area, I was relieved to find that all of Thailand had not been converted for the tourist’s sake. We made our way over to the area our guidebook described as having Sino-Portuguese architecture. We wandered into an art gallery, the first I had seen, and explored a used book store. At one point, I looked up and saw the black clouds coming in and suggested that we make our way back to the resort. On the way, we asked the driver to stop at a market so we could pick up some fruit. He willingly obliged and we immediately got lost in the aisles and aisles of the open air market filled with locals and exotic fruits, meats, and vegetables.

That evening, we sat by the ocean and broke into dragon fruit, a red pepper shaped pear tasting fruit and some other nameless goodies. Indhu, Ian and Christina went back into town to find some dinner and Giles and I went to the resort’s Japanese restaurant for some sushi and noodles. The prices on the resort seemed exorbitant compared to what you could find in town, but were actually equivalent to American non-resort restaurants, so for the sake of relaxation and ease, we decided to “splurge.”