Asia: Thailand Part 2

Laos to Thailand
We are genuinely excited to be returning to Thailand; it is a country that we both love and respect. The journey was quite short taking only about 1 and a half hours to complete with a good chunk of that time taken up by immigration on both the Laos side and the Thai side. In order to get across the river we had to cross the first Laos - Thai friendship bridge. I quite like the fact that they called it the first thai Lao friendship bridge. The word first seems to indicate that there is a lot more friendship to come.
Our journey started as always with a bus journey or rather a wait at the hotel to be picked up and transported to the bus station. As with all our other experiences they were late picking us up which sent us into a state of apprehension and into a culture clash. Being from a western background we are conditioned into a state where time is absolute not relative. Pick up at 8:30 am, means pick up at 8:30 am and 5 minutes means exactly five minutes. In Laos ( and a lot of other countries in the world ) these two principals do not apply. So we were trying desperately to remain calm and not imagine the consequences of missing the bus to Thailand. We didn't succeed. We tried to get the hotel to chase the taxi company but they didn't want to enter into a potential conflict. They told us the phone call to do this would cost 2000 kip per minute. Long story, short the taxi did turn up 40 minutes late with about 20 minutes to go before the bus left. Now we thought we were in trouble because the bus station we got dropped off at was at least 30 minutes away but as it turns out we weren't going to that one. We were in fact going to the local municipal bus station 10 minutes round the corner. I wish they had told us that we might not have got so excited.
Going across the bridge involved going through two sets of immigration and a side of the road change. In Thailand they drive on the left and on Laos they drive on the right so shell was fascinated to know at what point they would swap sides. They made it one way which filtered the driver onto the correct side of the road as soon as we passed Laos immigration. It was also fun to tick off the flags as markers to which country we were in. Half way through they changed from Laos to Thailand, Laos, Laos, Laos, Thailand, hurray!!

Return to Thailand
Arriving in Thailand we noticed the fun return to the atmosphere from our very first encounter with the cheeky tuk tuk driver. We were staying in a border town called nong khai at a resort type place close to the train station. We were there for a couple of nights before boarding the sleeper train for Bangkok. After settling in we ventured into the town and found a very popular Vietnamese restaurant where we sat down for lunch. Shell made a very interesting observation, we were eating Vietnamese in Thailand while looking at Laos; bit of a crazy thought.

The bold and the beautiful, thai style
At this point I am going to take a bit of a break from travel talk and discuss television. As we have been travelling through countries we have turned on the TV to catch up on the news with bbc world news. A bit of channel hopping has revealed a thai soap opera which looked, amazingly, like a thai version of the bold and the beautiful (BATB) . It's almost as though a Thai TV producer had seen the BBAT and thought " I am having one of those". It had all the classic hall marks of BATB including naff acting, implausible stories, looks over talent actors and exaggerated emotional looks, for example, surprise where eyebrows are raised right up to the fringe line. There is one thing, in my opinion that truly elevates the Thai BATB above all others. The matriarch has massive hair, I don't mean big, I don't mean huge, I mean massive. It is phenomenal exactly how massive this hair is. I am not joking when I say the end of her hair is probably 12 inches from her cranium. It must take at least a tanker load of hair spray to get it to stand straight up. I could only conclude that hair ascension is a symbol and measure of status. If it is this lady is definitely in charge.

Buddha Park and Photo Shoot
Our morning was spent visiting a Buddha park on the other side of town. These Buddha depictions were made of concrete and towered some 25 metres in the air. The person who did them obviously thought go big or go home when it came to statues. They were impressive to see and it was pretty difficult to miss them because of their size.
Returning to the resort we decided to spend the afternoon by the pool. Whilst we were there a local photographer and model turned up to do a bikini photo shoot. Shell said this was quite unusual because thai girls don't normally wear bikinis and she did seem quite shy. When they are at he beach it is usually shorts and T-shirt. Anyway, it is what it is. The photographer took shots around the pool and the model moved into the pool for some pool shots. About 10 minutes in, two local children, just finished from school came rushing into the complex. Showing absolutely no sensitivity to the framing of the photographer's shot they photobombed it in every sense of the word. Not only did they get in the shot but they took an enormous leap from the side of the pool and bombed into the water. The model was splashed, the blue steel pout interrupted and from that point on there were no more in the pool shots. Everyone thought it was funny except the two people disrupted by it.

The Sleeper Train
I really like sleeper trains, I'm not really sure why, I think it might be because I haven't grown up with them. Anyway, I was looking forward to our overnight train from Nong Khai to Bangkok. Loading up our bags we travelled the short distance from our hotel road to railway station. Upon entering the platform a very smiley conductor beckoned us over to the awaiting train. He checked our tickets and pointed us to the first carriage at the front of the train. Shell and I have been on sleeper trains before and from our experience we were expecting very small bunk beds in a shared carriage. We had prepared ourselves for a massive dilemma about what we do with our bags. Do the bags get one bunk and we squish in another? Do we each sleep on, in or next to our bags? As it turned out we didn't have to worry.
When we purchased the ticket we were told that second class was full and so we bought first class tickets ( which in retrospect we think might be a bit of a scam because the whole first class except one was full of foreigners. I have a sneaky suspicion that they know we can pay more and tell us it's full to get us to upgrade. ). A First class ticket meant an entire cabin to ourselves with enough room for our bags and a bed each. What a score! We were delirious with excitement because we had never experienced this before. Ok, it was a long way from the orient express lap of luxury but it was great to have our own space. The guard even comes along and makes up bunk beds for you, transforming the seat into two beds (the back of the seat becomes the bottom of the top bunk bed). We had dinner brought to us from a menu choice and we had been presented with a golden opportunity to get some sleep. The tickets were quite expensive but when you combine them as accommodation and transport then it wasn't too bad.
The other great thing was we got chatting to a German couple two cabins down who were travelling for about two months. We spent most of the early evening chatting about travelling, our experiences, work, education, cultural differences and life in general. They were really interesting and fascinating people; it was a joy to talk to them. I really like this about traveling, the interesting people you meet.
We got a reasonable amount of sleep, probably about 4-5 hours straight deep sleep and half sleep after that. It's actually quite tricky to convince your body that it is ok to sleep while it is in motion. I found that it was easier if the train was going at a constant speed but when it slowed down for stations I would wake up. I was on the top bunk for the whole journey, hurray!

Arrival in Bangkok
We arrived into Bangkok train station and after running the gauntlet of tuk tuk drivers we got into a metered taxi to take us to our hotel. So special is this hotel that it gets its own section, see below. When we arrived we checked in but because it was 6:00 am in the morning the room wasn't ready. Even Shell using her best thai and explaining her historical attachment to the hotel couldn't get us in any earlier than 12 noon. To kill time we decided to go get breakfast and tick a few items off our tourist list. So, our day basically went like this, Khaosan road for breakfast, temples mid morning, into the room at 1 and Khaosan road for dinner.

The Viengtai hotel
The Viengtai Hotel is an independent hotel on the road next to and parallel to Khaosan road. It is about a three to three and a half star hotel situated close to the busiest backpacker area in Bangkok. It has good sized rooms, is clean, tidy, well managed and on par with the hotels operating in the west. It has a pool, buffet breakfast and all the facilities one would expect of a hotel.
To shell and I it is more than a hotel for sentimental reasons. Intrepid, the tour group that shell worked for used the Viengtai as one of its base hotels. Intrepid trips would arrive and depart here, welcome meet and greets would be performed here as passengers from all over the world would join their groups before they set off into Thailand. It was chosen as a base hotel because it is comforting in facilities and aesthetics for people who had never been to the region before. A safe haven to gather. It is also the place where shell and I met for the first time. I arrived for my northern Thailand trip and Shell was the tour leader.
For me, starting my adventure at the Viengtai has had huge far reaching consequences on the direction of my life. It was the start point in my discovery of a wider world that broadened my mind and my horizons. Ultimately, it led to me leaving the country I was born in to forge another life where I lived and worked in another country. It, of course, led to a blissful happy life with Shell.
Shell, of course has a deeper connection to the hotel because many of the her trips started and ended here. She welcomed many people and formed them into travelling groups and introduced them to Thailand. It was a base for her to work, a base for her to play, a base for her to discover and a home away from home where she could share experiences with other tour leaders. She knows many of the staff that currently work and have worked at the hotel.
When we were looking for somewhere to stay in Bangkok we naturally looked at the Viengtai for accommodation and decided for nostalgic reasons to spend our final nights of our Asia adventure at this hotel. When we did, we learnt that this independent hotel that has been here for over 30 years has been sold by the owner and will be converted to an ibis over the next 18 months. The Viengtai hotel will close its doors on the day we leave Thailand, it is perhaps poetic that we will be some of the last guests that ever stay at the Viengtai hotel.
As you can imagine our stay is lined with a little bit of sadness knowing that we will never again return to this hotel. Shell has had the opportunity to see and stay good bye to the staff that still remain. Our feelings are tender as we are part of the hotel's final days.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Khaosan Road in the Morning
Khaosan road is a backpacker magnet, it is, for many people the first place that they stay in or see when they arrive in Thailand and it is usually crazy busy. It is the presentation of the chaos of Asia.
Shell and I have usually seen this road in the daytime or at night when it is teeming with travellers, food hawkers, stalls, bars, restaurants and local Thais trying to make a living. We have never seen it at six o clock in the morning, which, is exactly what happened when we arrived. It really did have that morning after feel.
We have never seen it so quiet, mostly desolate, only a few people remain. There were a group of backpackers, all lads, standing in the circle singing western pop songs, being accompanied by a bloke on a guitar ( there is always someone with a guitar), world weary thai girls sitting on the kerb looking shagged out and something scurrying about in the shadows. Putting soft focus lighting on the camera it could be described as people who enjoy the night, people who work the night and furry friends who scavenge a meal before the garbage truck takes it away. Without the soft focus it's drunks, prostitutes and rats. We had breakfast and then left to look at some temples.

Temples in Bangkok
Wat Arun
We love a good temple and there are some fantastic ones in Bangkok. The greatest of these is the grand palace but we have been so often we have decided to give it a miss this time. We went to
Wat Arun instead. This meant a very quick trip across the river in a local ferry. Wat Arun is currently undergoing a lot of restoration work so there are parts closed off and scaffolding everywhere. The parts that they have done look really good and it is quite a contrast with the area that they haven't. It was quite a hot day so we took a bit of a break and rested under the shade of a tree in the temple grounds. As we sat there we heard chanting from the temple, it was a nice experience because they were same as the ones we used to chant in the meditation centre.
Where we were sitting seemed to be an offering station for the monks of the temple. There was a monk sitting on a cushion surrounded by plastic bags containing food and household items. As we were sitting there a local man with a lap top bag and dressed in smart casual clothing arrived. He spoke to the monk, slipped off his shoes and went through a very small ritual. We surmised that the monk had just performed a blessing. The man stood up, put back on his shoes and gave his donation of potato chips and toilet paper. The monk gladly accepted this gift and the man was on his way. As soon as the man disappeared the monk, with not a lot else to do whipped out his mobile phone and started to type something. I'd like to think he was making a facebook update, changed his status to "just dished out a blessing". It is always a funny image when you see a monk with a modern piece of technology.
Golden mount
Neither Shell or I had ever visited the Golden Mount so it was a bit of a new adventure for us. We decided to walk to destination just to have a look around more than anything else. As we were crossing a small bridge Shell spotted a monitor lizard. A really good example as well. It was about 1 metre and a half in length, very fat, just sitting in the sun. Continuing our journey we came across a workshop. In this workshop 3 craftsmen were making alms bowls for the monks, a skill which is dying out. They were physically bashing the metal into shape with a little hammer. Shell took a great deal of interest in this and stopped for a closer look. One of the craftsmen invited her to have a go which she accepted readily. We have some fantastic photos of shell crafting a alms bowl for a monk.
When we arrived at the Golden Mount we were greeted by a spiral staircase. The climb to the temple was lined with picturesque landscaped gardens and prayer bells. Everyone had a go at ringing the bells and the sounds of the chimes accompanied us on our climb. Reaching the top we were rewarded with a fantastic view of the Bangkok skyline. We could see all the major sights and we got an appreciation of the size of the city.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Khaosan Road at night
We stepped out of the air conditioned hotel and were blasted with a 30 degree heat. The scene that greets us is exactly the opposite to the one we saw at 6:30 am. The whole place is alive, absolutely alive. Khaosan road and our road are like two main arteries carrying super charged energy all through them. The bars and restaurants are open packed with people, the food hawkers are out, the stalls are set up and there are people of every age from very corner of the globe streaming through the streets.
The atmosphere is one of excitement and adventure as people discover the wonders of Thailand and Asia. There are people who are obviously new wearing a look of wtf is this, there are new romances beginning, new friends being made, stories being shared, advice being given, friendships being rekindled, newbies realising if they are going to eat they are going to have to try something new, couples glad they have someone supportive to share the experience, old hands revelling in the new influx of people and the locals enjoying either the opportunity to make money or enjoy a different atmosphere. The beer is flowing and the party is just starting.It is difficult to capture in words the thrill of Khaosan road.
The thing is that many Thais come to the area to be part of the atmosphere and dress a little more liberally than is usual in thai culture. If you walk a couple of streets over, the local university students are on the periphery of the atmosphere enjoying themselves.
The number of western backpackers make it somehow comforting that one is not alone but there is no denying or mistaking that you are being confronted by something very different and you are definitely not " in Kansas anymore". It is where East meets West and where the individual meets Asia. I said earlier that Khaosan road and the other roads close by are like arteries pumping super charged energy, well, these arteries are like those that belong to Lance Armstrong; there are all sorts of funny things going flowing through there.
We walked the 150 -200 metres that is the length of the road and this is what we saw.
1. Food stall selling scorpions and insects for eating.
2. Local thai promo girls wearing short skirts with legs up to their armpits trying to entice you into the restaurants.
3. One of the short skirted promo girls doing a breakdance for the tourists and flashing her undies in the process. The tourists happened to be Japanese who immediately scrambled for their cameras with delighted looks on their faces.
4. A beer stall with the sign "Fuckin good beer" advertising its product. This is excellent I wouldn't want to purchase an inferior beverage.
5. We were offered many an opportunity to see the type of ping pong show that doesn't use a table tennis bat.
6. A restaurant called "We don't check ID restaurant".
7. A stall that will sell you any university degree or drivers licence from anywhere in the world. We saw one for the university of Sydney staring us right in the face. I mean, why work for three years when you can spend three minutes to get the same piece of paper. Shocking.
8. Unbelievable, cheap buckets of alcohol. I suspect the contents would be really good at cleaning the drains too.
9. Many more but you get the idea.

We had dinner and went to bed. Crazy kids.

Are you sure?
Shell says that some of these girls aren't really girls they are actually boys. I asked her "are you sure?" Principally, because they really do look like girls. I have decided that this is too confusing and I am not going to think about it. If anyone wants me I will hiding behind my shield of blissful ignorance in my armour of denial.

What just happened?
Shell and I decided to check out the local international meditation centre here in Bangkok; more out of curiosity than anything else. It is located at Wat Mahadhatu in the old city of Bangkok. We found our way into the temple complex without too much trouble but couldn't really see where the meditation centre was. We could hear chanting so we just followed the sound. It led us to a big structure in the centre of the site. In this building was a huge sitting Buddha at the the top of a huge hall. In the hall were nuns and lots of local thai people kneeling, meditating and being part of the ritual. We didn't really feel that this was the place primarily because we were the only white people in the local vicinity. We stuck our head through the entrance to have a look around and kinda withdrew because it didn't look quite right. Then something happened that I am still ensure what happened.
As we were standing outside the entrance a nun from inside the hall came to the door. She motioned to us to take our shoes off and then beckoned us inside. Great, we thought this is nice. Having taken our shoes off we entered the hall. The nun took us inside and led us down to the front of the hall. Hmm, not quite what we were expecting. Then she took us right to the very front of the hall, directly in front of the sitting Buddha. We were in front of all the local Thais, positioned at the base of the statue, very close to a microphone. Now, we are confused and a little apprehensive. I was worried that in some crazy way we were going to have to lead the chanting. The nun bowed three times in front of the Buddha and motioned for us to do the same. Having completed our bows she stood and requested us to follow her. She then introduced us to another nun, in silence we offered our greetings and sat down. This must be the meditation lady we thought. Just as we were getting comfortable the original nun informed us with a beckoning that we weren't staying. We were instead taken to the back of the hall where all the locals were sitting. The nun then knelt in front of a alms bowl contains 20 baht notes, picked one out, placed it between the palm of her hands, knelt and placed the money back in the bowl. I got the meaning here. So, we both reached into our pockets got our 20 baht notes and mimicked the action. For our donation we were given a mint from another bowl. The nun looked almost happy and instructed to stand. She then led us to the door we had just come in which had now become the exit and invited to withdraw. Stepping outside Shell and I put our shoes back on, looked at each other confused and asked "what just happened? I'm classifying it under, paying our respects.
We eventually found the meditation centre with the help of a curly moustached thai man and had a beginners class in meditation. It was obviously the Bangkok equivalent of the meditation centre we attended in Chiang Mai. There were three other people in this beginners class, one dressed in white who was staying for a while. We had a wry smile of knowing on our faces as we knew the experience he was going to have. We did a sitting and walking meditation for a couple of hours ands then left to meet one of shell's old work buddies.

Last day in Thailand
Today is our last full day in Thailand and I think it will be a quiet one by the pool at the hotel. Our flight is mid morning so I expect we will be up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport in time. We are genuinely sad to be ending our Asia adventure and leaving Thailand. I think there will only be one way we can deal with this on the flight, only one way we can soften the blow. That's right we will have to watch the Disney film Frozen because, despite it being the theme tune of our Asia experience we haven't actually seen it. So, with the words "let it go" ringing in our ears we will conclude the first stage of our travels.

Travel observations
It's good to know that countries all over the world are facing the same problem. Whether it was Malaysia, Thailand, borneo or Laos people are more interested in looking at their phones than driving. I call this hands free driving.
I think all the drivers here think my name is Tuk Tuk because every time I step out onto the street I am greeted with "hello, tuk,tuk".